


A Little (Less) Night Music

by leslielol



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: First Kiss, Flirting, Hidden Talents, M/M, Second-Hand Embarrassment, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-07-20 06:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19987708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: He’sreally good,which is his saving grace because he’s alsoreally drunk.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m super against RPF. Fullstop. Part of that makes me hesitant to draw in aspects of a character’s actor into fic. And yet, I’m also A BIG DUMB BABY for hidden talent fics--singing, dancing, cooking. I love the visual of something expressive being retained for a quiet moment alone. Loooove it. I love it and want to ruin it. 
> 
> Mostly, this is a result of 1) wanting to write something fun, 2) being excited for SVU again (!!!), and 3) a friend of mine fucking murdering karaoke last weekend. 
> 
> Thanks for reading :)

Amanda Rollins has many vices--many more still that she’s given up--but gossip is a mainstay. It’s as essential to her upbringing as iced tea, buried family secrets, and Sunday brunches of grits and greens. Gossip permeates every facet of living: it enhances every meal, sharpens every look. It cooks warm as a body in a too-small bikini under a summer day. 

(The _things she’s heard_ from cherry-painted lips over the smudged mouth of a mason jar half-full of light and something stronger could shock a preacher’s hair white.)

Southern gossip carries with it traditions of narratives, rife with backstory thrown as far as blurred bayou lines, hollar feuds, criminal land runs, and far worse. Woven through it is a progressive and steady stream of nods towards other sordid tales for another sordid day. On the whole, it’s a weightier thing to be party to than what she’s become invested in here in New York. Although absent those tight connections--family or community, where there’s always a hand in someone’s back pocket, or a foot on their throat--Rollins doesn’t exactly find herself starved for scraps. New York is, after all, the city that never sleeps. She figures that’s because it’s always awake and _talking about itself._

And there’s plenty to tell: _someone’s_ always doing _something_ some _where,_ at some godforsaken hour. All Rollins has to do is silence the music in her earbuds, and she can hear every word of it, rising in great swells on subway platforms and in line at cafes. 

Admittedly, the genre leaves something to be desired, though Rollins can’t fault her eavesdropping, Twitter stream, trashy sites, and various apps for that. Their delivery method is different, not inherently lesser. Where it peaks is its intoxicatingly emphatic tones: there are no lingering questions, nothing to stew over for an afternoon. There are headlines and proof of purchase, only. Hot takes are an added bonus, but what delights her best is the new standard of _seeing is believing._

A photo or video is _everything,_ and Rollins doesn’t have to be a detective, even, to have a trained eye for these things. She scrolls and dismisses what doesn’t immediately catch her eye. She doesn’t need to look into the mirror of young women making mediocre mistakes and being torn to shreds for them.

 _Men,_ however, and men making fools of themselves _specifically,_ is her bread and butter. 

She feasts on the A train.

Walking into the precinct, Rollins has her coffee in one hand and is still scrolling through progressively weaker headlines. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see her desk and the heap of paperwork she’s been dreading all weekend. She swerves and makes for the break room instead, deciding her coffee needs one more splash of milk. 

_Last gasps,_ she tells herself, scrolling through still more clickbait. 

It’s all fantasy. She knows this. 

More specifically, it is introspection _into_ the production _of_ a curated, insulated, self-populated bastardization of reality posing _as_ fantasy. 

It's not a good look. 

She leans against the fridge, the handle jutting into her hip. She glances up from her phone and spies a busy bullpen, studies the criss-crossing paths of detectives and uniformed officers alike. She knows phones are ringing even if she can’t hear them. Her world--the one she lives in, not the smoothed-planes on which she peers over and sees through stylized visions of tragedy and triumph--is the heightened reality, merciless because its impacts are felt deeply, not thumbed through by any idle hand.

She starts a video--her last of the morning, she _swears_ \--and the sound is at once over-loud in her one earbud. If there's so much as a ten-second ad to start, she'll close it and call it a day. 

There’s only one delay, and it’s between the spark of realization alighting in her mind and its exacting verbalization: _“Holy shit.”_

There’s little other explanation for so fantastic a turn. She’s pulling herself out of the abstract and back into reality, but finding habitable space in both simultaneously, and neither corrupts the other. 

Carisi ducks his head into the breakroom. Rollins is a year out from her pregnancy, but he still treats every exclamation on her part like a potential contraction. In this instance, Rollins doesn’t mind his keen ear; it feels like divine providence, now.

_“Boy--”_

It’s an order, fullstop.

She jams an earbud against his left ear, faster than he has time to object and gather his own. It's her urgency that sways him: it pushes him off guard and angles his whole self towards the notion that this must be serious. 

Fin, who is perhaps three steps behind Carisi, gets no similar treatment. He continues on, unencumbered, to top off his coffee with what's left in the pot and start a fresh one. 

He barely looks at his colleagues, who don’t acknowledge him in the slightest. Their focus is trained on Rollins’ phone, where the vision--even for intaking it--confounds them entirely. 

He can hear the tinny sounds of singing bleeding through the shared earbuds. It's not to Fin's particular tastes, but the twinned expressions of abject horror on their faces, Fin thinks, are a little much.

He fills the tank with water, rinses the pot, and chucks the day-old filter still wet and heavy with used grounds. Rollins is now _giddy_ and Carisi looks as though every limb is vertically challenged: his knees are bent, one elbow is thrown into the air, its hand fixed at the back of his neck. Some invisible power greater than gravity is bending him to its will. 

Fin sighs as the coffee machine chugs to life and dispenses its usual dribble. 

“You white people really love your memes, huh?”

-

Carisi watches the video again on his break, and a few times more on the subway home. He knows, come the end of the month, he’ll be embarrassed for his data overages. 

It starts shakily, with a guy filming his date as she prepares to tie a knot in a cherry stem. He’s asking, teasing her, _How you know how to do this, huh?_ She laughs in his face.

 _I have two semesters at Hudson under my belt, dummy._

The video jerks left, then right, and refocuses on the action behind the woman, up on an awkward stage space beyond some tightly-gathered tables. Barba is there, dressed from work, scotch in hand, red-faced, smiling. The long arms of a friend are propelling him forward. 

It’s clear from the tone of the videographer’s commentary-- _wait, wait, baby, watch this fool_ \--that he’s anticipating a hilarious flop.

Even for knowing Barba for infinitely better than such an estimate, Carisi isn't blind to how it looks: a middle aged man, wearing suspenders, drink in hand, taking the stage. On its very face, it reads for tragedy. 

Barba is a loose, grinning, giddy drunk. It's well beyond a different look for him; his body moves differently, seems less self-contained. His mouth is likewise quicker to laugh than to smirk. 

The music kicks in. Barba laughs at the microphone in his hand and then, more appropriately, laughs into the microphone.

Carisi watches as he takes a drink, then a breath, and rather than compose himself, rather than resume that impenetrable identity he champions, Barba assumes a different _existence._ A third, now, though it is spaces removed from either drunk or his usual canniness and furtive wit. There are shades of the showmanship and confidence he wears in court, both in his swagger and jut of his jaw. But radiating through it all, buoying every shred of assurance, is an irreverent, undeniable third ingredient: _gusto._

The man recording gives an apt “oh, shit” when Barba's voice emerges, fully formed, carrying a song.

He’s _really good,_ which is his saving grace because he’s also _really drunk._

He sways as he croons, nearly falls backwards hitting a high note, and his descent into giggles as the song ends is only matched by his near-leap off the stage. It could have been cataclysmic, any of it. All of it.

Instead, any breath he shuttered in was expelled back in triumph.

His friends greet him back at their table with raucous whistles and applause, disjointed shouts of _Ra-fi! Ra-fi!_ and efforts to foist another drink or two into his hands. 

The last of the clip is a close-up of the amateur filmographer's date: she looks agog, mouth slackened, nose wrinkled, hands open but grasping at nothing. 

The video freeze frames there, then spins out to reveal the LMZ crew all gathered around an open-concept writer’s room, seemingly at ease but no doubt picked, placed, and scripted with all the forethought and precision of a Rembrant. Gossip mogul Lenny Simmons sits dead center, his gimmicky baseball bat resting across his knees.

One asks, “Isn’t that the guy who put you in the tombs over Memorial Day weekend, Len?” 

Lenny has some smart remark, but Carisi’s already dragging his finger along the red bar at the base of the video, skirting back into time. 

In an attempt to salvage a little self respect, Carisi does not return to the video before he showers, or after, or in the several hours he spends lying in bed, uselessly willing sleep to take him. 

It was most nights now that he couldn't sleep as a matter of habit or ritual; thoughts, doubts, and counterfactuals plagued those supposed restful moments. He’d had a _noisy brain,_ always, since childhood. Sheer exhaustion was what took him, if ever. His best attempt to beat the game was to empty his mind of all things, to slip into that interior plane by sleight of hand. 

It was profoundly poor luck to have something to think about, now.

-

As best Carisi can tell, the video never makes the LMZ broadcast, but exists solely as an online feature. It disappears from the site’s main feed as more desirable scandal emerges. People all over the city are falling disasterously in and out of love, committing bank fraud, and getting caught having sex on the Flushing Line. It’s altogether so much greater and so much worse than a civil servant belting out a song. 

The view count is nonetheless substantial--excluding, even, the healthy portion tied to Carisi’s own IP address. 

He realizes with some restless unease that this must be embarrassing for Barba. Nevermind his surprising talent, his playfulness in its display among friends, _amid drinks_ \--eschewing all that is the fact that he’s been caught with his guard down. Such is a rare enough find in the courtroom, and rarer still to have happened before all of New York City, that those eager for a taste are salivating for scraps.

Carisi hadn’t figured for all that, not really. Not in practice, at least, which is what he is witness to one afternoon as Barba finishes up a motions hearing. He’s promised Carisi some warrants, and Carisi figures he can talk him into a few more if he buys the man a coffee after court and walks him back to his office.

The defense attorney is young and too sure of himself by half, and must remind his older, wealthy, and profoundly guilty client of himself. They’re a fine match, as both have been reprimanded by the judge for speaking out of turn.

Judge Amway cuts off the young attorney’s last tirade with a curt, “I said _dismissed,_ Mr. Hirsch.”

Then, a cheeky, “No encores. From anyone.”

Carisi has no doubt that Barba keeps his face impassive, but even from deep in the gallery, he can read the annoyance in the set of the man’s shoulders, the way his hand pauses over what he’s been scribbling on his notepad.

Hirsch isn’t so coy with his jokes. He all but forgets his client in favor of cowing Barba with his crummy lines, yammering on even as Barba takes his briefcase and his leave. 

Carisi hangs by the door and smiles weakly when Barba greets him with a listless _“Fine.”_

They fall into step. Carisi, venturing out on that limb, offers an overly-cheerful: “People are still on about that? Old news.” 

Again, Barba doesn’t blink.

“Not people. Defense attorneys.” Carisi follows Barba towards the stairs; he doesn’t take the elevator anymore. “Your beloved Lisa Hassler? I’m her ringtone.”

Carisi wants to wince, if only to appease Barba’s keen sense of injustice, but he just can’t help himself.

“That’s actually _really cool.”_

That gets a reaction, at least. Barba narrows his eyes and purses his lips.

He says, “Buy me a coffee.”

It’s understood that only then will forgiveness for so sharp a betrayal be awarded.

It’s all Carisi has said on the subject. Every other word and thought in his head, he’s swallowed down or beaten back. Rollins couldn’t help herself the day of, and the flash of panic in Barba’s eyes was too familiar to what Carisi had seen elsewhere--namely, on courthouse security camera footage--that he cannot allow himself to be associated with its cause. And as in that instance, Barba likewise pulled back, refused himself all natural human compulsion, and realigned. 

(He’d cut his gaze towards the paperwork she’d handed him, muttered his only thoughts on the subject-- _Whose weekend was so uninspired they had to spy on mine?_ \--pointed out a spelling error, and retreated to supposed business in Benson’s office.)

His choice bodes well: Barba is less exacting in his criticisms and more generous with his time, given that Carisi isn’t needling him. He’s not told to scram, which is essentially an invitation to join Barba into his office to review an upcoming case. With Benson’s approval, Carisi spends the next three hours in near-absolute silence on Barba’s couch, pouring over time and date stamps across various social media, generating a minute-by-minute account of their victim, perps, and various witnesses. It’s an airtight defense against any loose recollections. Carisi’s proud to hand it over to Barba, who studies it silently before proclaiming, “This is good.” 

Carisi is ecstatic. Out of habit, he waits a beat for any rejoinder Barba thinks to give himself. None comes.

_( **Ec** static.)_

Riding that wave, Carisi opens his mouth to suggest they order take out and give Barba’s opening statement another once-over. He thinks if he asks everything at once, he'll manage to get it out at all. 

Barba’s cell rings in the interim. He answers the call only to have his own voice blasted back at him. It only takes Barba a few seconds to come to his senses and forcibly end the call, but there's no mistaking it. 

The moment, the song, the break from all the esteem and decorum afforded to the space by Barba’s work, the reputation lined along his walls--it’s _absurd._

For his shock and Barba’s, Carisi very nearly laughs. The tightening around Barba’s mouth is what stops him: it's such that Barba doesn’t speak, doesn't look as if he _can._ He holds himself in, holds himself steady, neither gives nor takes anything. There's nary a sigh, hum, or grunt. He is wholly composed in a way that is inexplicably more strange than anything Carisi's ever seen from him, on video or not. 

Carisi can't narrow down what he feels about that: shame, embarrassment, commiseration, and heartbreak all take a turn.

But it’s intrigue that hurries his pursuit. And want.

“I hope it was Buchanan," he says, his voice over-loud to downplay what came before. “He ought to be working on his defense. He’s sure as shit gonna need it, right?”

Barba doesn't answer. He seems to be thinking very deeply on the matter, a thing Carisi knows bodes well for none involved. 

“It’s nothing. Really. This? You, being great at something?” Carisi flails his arms, gesturing wildly to some massive, invisible crowd. “Isn’t news to fuckin’ _anybody,_ Rafael.” 

Barba looks wary of the defense, but at the very least he’s drawn back into the present for its consideration. He isn’t tempted into five days gone, thinking he was a fool for enjoying a night out with old friends--what few he had left. 

“That’s not for you to say, and,” there’s a glimmer of bemusement coloring his words, just cresting the tops and illuminating the edges, like dawn breaking through buildings in the skyline. “Are you calling me by my first name, now?”

“That a step too far, Counselor?”

“Try a mile.” 

The sharp sliver of a smile he gives is a certified miracle, sunlight and parting rain clouds included, given how dower he’d been just seconds earlier. It’s paradise in its presentation, unfettered and willing. Carisi can see the heavens from lower Manhattan. 

That little voice of doubt--the one that stalled his hand over the stolen video’s progress bar in nights passed--put its drumming tones to the curl of Carisi’s ear. _But that’s too much, isn’t it?_

Carisi ducks his head, cedes to the moment’s brightness as well as its tension.

“I’ll stop, if you want.”

Barba doesn’t so much as blink. He decides to say a thing that, whatever its substance, is profound for its saying. 

“I’ll let you know when I decide what I want.” 

They do this, sometimes. 

They look one another dead in the eye and flirt so recklessly that Carisi prays for the inevitable ruin, prays that the fantasy does not again present itself, if only because so persistent an anomaly reneges its status as such. 

_Jesus Christ,_ Carisi thinks, every time, his mouth going dry _every time._ This is it. If he could just part his lips, take in a little gasp of air to feed that singular, all-consuming thought, _Could that be for me?_

Carisi falters. Always. If he thinks for one moment he won’t, then it’s circumstance derailing his too-long pause, and his silent invitations for more are promptly scuttled. He gets this far and no farther, and is embarrassed for it. 

“I’ll stop,” he says, smiling politely and looking away.

“Hmm,” Barba says, and Carisi gets the distinct feeling he’s drawing a mental tally on a very one-sided count. 

For his own, Barba enjoys their back-and-forth. Carisi is ridiculously easy to wind up, but sometimes surprises Barba with his bravado. Different beats through which to play a conversation are all Barba is after some days. He doesn’t have the luxury to play in those spaces; his work--and by extension, his life--doesn’t lend itself to being loose with his words, and consequently, there’s something novel in unceremoniously ending a battle of wits with an airy line of innuendo, or even a wink. It’s all a bit daring. 

However. 

It’s rooted in an early appreciation of Chaucer, or perhaps eschatology, or simple human pride--but there’s something to be said for seeing a thing through to its rightful end. And Barba’s been as open as he can be, receptive to whatever Carisi builds himself up to ask for. Drinks? _Done._ Take-out? _Regularly._ Another drink? _You’re two behind._

If Carisi’s after genuine friendship, Barba thinks they’ll have it once he relaxes into the very questions and deeds that allow for one to grow. But Carisi continues to pick at every instance--come and gone--wearing his anxiety like a sweater littered with pilling. There’s something he’s placed just beyond all that, something precious in and of itself, or else he wouldn’t be so troubled for how he gets there.

When it comes to his leg of the journey, Barba thinks he’s done plenty: he doesn’t shut the door in the man’s face, he smiles on occasion, he rolls his shirt sleeves up. Anything further would be _obscene._ He’s curious if Carisi means what it is he’s trying to say, if he’s really biting into those words, or recoiling for the taste. 

Maybe he’s happy circling the blossom, not the fruit.

For this reason, Barba’s all but sworn an oath not to make the winning play on his own. 

(A better reason is that he can forgive himself for idling over a colleague, but _wanting_ for the unattainable isn’t a mistake he plans to make twice.)

At least this awkward turn is more familiar than its predecessor. Barba knows his way over, around, and through it.

He discards his phone and perches on his desk. It's no less a thing than presenting himself.

He feeds Carisi two options, half-formed in the same breath.

“It’s late. Is my opening statement in that mess you left on my coffee table?” 

Carisi answers in turn: “Yeah, s’right here, under half a paragraph of prose. And it’s not that late.” 

Barba hears what they’re both listening for. He lets Carisi suggest delivery, but reserves veto power for the final selection.

Carisi’s offering his closing remarks on why they should go for the Chinese place on Mott over the deli on Worth (“Under new management, sure, but what, you think they gave the cockroaches livin' inside the stoves their pink slips?”) when Barba's office door is given a perfunctory knock. Barba sits up a little straighter for recognizing the gesture. It's just as well that he doesn't grant entrance; DA Jack McCoy lets himself in all the same.

“Rafael. Detective Carisi. I can see you’re both hard at work.” 

The comment issues itself through a smile, as if McCoy can read the lightness in the air and knows despite the open legal tomes, the scribbled-over reworkings of statements and findings, there was some recent revelry. 

Barba welcomes him, offers him a seat, or a drink if that’s what he’s after. 

He does it charmingly--Carisi, certainly, is charmed, even for awkwardly standing by the couch and wishing himself gone. Sensing this, McCoy assures to the room at large he needs only a brief moment of Barba’s time.

“I’d like to extend an invitation to a fundraiser I’m hosting next Friday evening,” he says, and as he speaks rounds Barba’s desk to inspect a curved glass fixture atop a heavy steel base: an award presented to him by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York some months ago at a gala. It’s undoubtedly prestigious, even for now being used to hold three loose rubber bands. “More my ex-wife’s thing, spurred by our daughter--Rebecca, you remember her.” 

Barba remembers the awkward meeting. McCoy, known to have been estranged from his family and only recently reconnecting, had been unable to say much about her upon their introduction. 

But then, that was a year ago. That was a _start._

Things--all things, with that great shared misfortune--progressed.

Barba isn’t remotely surprised; McCoy is disconcertingly likeable. 

McCoy continues selling an already stolen evening: “It’s a good cause, a good crowd, and an open bar. You went last year, I think. Had a good time, I hope?” 

“Of course.” All things considered, that was the truth. Political functions normally felt like sanctioned torture, but McCoy hadn’t mearly attached his name to the event, he’d gone so far as to share a little temperment. The evening buzzed along, the cause was heard, the donations made, the thanks given, and the drinks guzzled. Barba recalls he got home at a reasonable hour, that he made a substantive dent in a deeply sad, achingly beautiful novel he was reading, so bound to because a man he was seeing at the time had mentioned hating it, and Barba was, also at the time, looking to hate the man. 

“Thank you, but I--”

“Wonderful. And one favor repays another.” McCoy is already at the door when he delivers the ultimatum: “I’d consider it a generous donation of your time and talents if you were to perform a song. Just to kick things off. I’ve given your number to the coordinator, Jeanine Burton. She’ll be in touch.” 

“Excuse me?” Barba’s voice rises and falls, as if consequence struck him twice over and backwards. “No.” 

McCoy lingers in the doorway, smiling as if to say, _Your incredibly real and valid trepidation is all very amusing, but I really must be getting on._

Barba’s gaze flickers once to Carisi, then returns to where he hasn’t the slightest bit of pull, but would kill for the kind of sway he has with the Detective.

His voice level, almost quiet, Barba says: “Jack, with all due respect, I do not want to do that.” 

Carisi doesn’t know how, but he knows for a fact Barba’s never said exactly those words to Jack McCoy before.

“I know.” The sterling name plate on Barba’s door catches McCoy's eye. He looks it over appreciatively. He didn’t bring Barba in, can’t lay a letter of claim to the man’s storied start, but he has him now. He has some hold on the man’s potential, for so long as he grants freedom or sets limits in service to a doubly storied future. 

“A piece of advice, Rafael--lean into it. In this as in all things.”

McCoy watches that land, sees Barba running options in his head, searching for any result other than what he’s been given in no uncertain terms.

“Which, I know from experience, isn’t something I need to tell you twice.” McCoy knocks twice on the doorframe, cementing the deal. “Anyway. My admin says you’re really very good.”

Barba stiffens his spine and regards McCoy carefully.

“You haven’t watched the video?”

Barba asks this grudgingly, as if he’s still clinging to the slim possibility of McCoy simply asking this bizarre favor of him, absent any evidence to Barba’s ability to delivery. 

“I thought I’d rather see the real thing,” McCoy says, and that’s that. He gives an outright beatific smile, like he’s pleased with himself just for asking, never mind the overt insurance he has in getting it, regardless. He nods to them both. “Have a good night, Rafael. Detective.”

Carisi nearly jumps at being addressed. He feels--and imagines much the same is true for Barba--that forgetting he’s in the room at all is the preferable route. With McCoy's absence, he is given Barba’s attention by default. 

(It’s exactly the outcome he wants in precisely the worst circumstance.)

His gaze is regrettably cold and rigid, and Carisi is reminded of the eerie, internal focus he’s seen marring the faces of corpses. Barba looks likewise slighted, though for the awful visions gathering in his mind now that he’s opened that door a crack, Carisi wants to tell him to relax, to accept this minor inconvenience and _move on._ This isn’t an _actual _tragedy, it isn’t Barba’s grand end.__

___No one’s ever died for giving a little bit more of themselves than they might like,_ he wants to say. He’d know. A year in Homicide runs the gamut, and SVU doesn’t fare much better some days. _ _

__Barba recovers quickly enough, and Carisi knows he’d never have said those things, anyway. He almost wants to apologize just for thinking them._ _

__“The time table is good,” Barba says, repeating the last coherent thought in his head. It’s not the resounding return to form he’d envisioned, which puts him that much deeper in the hole. Carisi, for his own, feels as though he’s surveying the excavation._ _

__With a heavy sigh, Barba gives up the game. He rubs a large hand over his face, bruising his fingertips along his brow. With his free hand, he digs into the second desk drawer, retrieves a half-empty bottle of Tylenol, deftly pops the cap, palms three pills, and swallows them dry. It’s a performance of ritualistic defeat, though he very much feels a genuine migraine approaching._ _

__It goes without saying that plans to share dinner over trial prep are scrapped._ _

__“That’s all for tonight, I think.”_ _

__Carisi gives him this much and does not argue._ _

__He doesn’t find the words to belay Barba’s embarrassment, but he strings together what he can to exit without making it that much worse._ _

__Barba stays another hour in his office._ _

__Carisi keeps the same time outside 1 Hogan Place, ass planted on a cold marble step. He doesn’t mean--specifically--to wait for him. He keeps busy itemizing and logging the kinds of thoughts that will keep him awake, later._ _

__He lands on those details that the eye loses sight of: the young couple seeming out of place amid a more middle-aged bar crowd, the variety of languages spoken in the lilting background of the video, the location tagged to the original post. It all spelled plainly the fact that Barba was back in his old neighborhood, in the company of the few friends he still has there, and feeling comfortable for all of it._ _

__He’s done this before, ages ago, and his body remembers. It’s there for feeling a little wild, feeling hungry for the attention in a way he isn’t anymore, having ascended to a level where he not only expects it, but plays it back to onlookers. That’s the crux of it, Carisi decides: Barba is embarrassed for thinking he could ever go back--back home, back to being a bit of a wunderkind--without encountering some consequence for his hubris. The reality was, he’d abandoned that place, those people, and done so willfully. _Gladly._ He could fall back into place for a moment--they were kind enough to allow him this--but the world didn’t stop and let him forget he's disappointed people on the path to becoming something they didn’t recognize, or _couldn’t_ recognize, without a few too many drinks and the opportunity to show off. _ _

__Carisi supposes it’s only natural that Barba turns his embarrassment to punishment, and faults himself unfairly for something that, in the moment, only delighted him._ _

__Sitting outside his colleague’s place of work, wishing he’d done anything more than he had and never liking the half-formed reasons why he doesn’t, the feeling strikes rich in Carisi himself._ _

__Then Barba emerges, briefcase in hand, suit jacket on despite the warm night. He looks surprised for Carisi’s being there, and maybe--if it merely isn’t a trick of the light--a touch relieved. He swipes away the open Lyft app on his phone, accepting in advance what Carisi is sure to give._ _

__And in the moment, that’s how it feels for Carisi: that he offers a ride home with just enough tact that the man accepts._ _

__(It’s a favor, Carisi will agonize over in hindsight. If Barba doesn’t accept what Carisi’s already waited around to give, the moment becomes a denial, the offer a backlash.)_ _

__The whole situation still has Carisi feeling sick and contentious, like he wants to argue some point he hasn’t fully decided on yet._ _

__Barba, conversely, suddenly seems restored. He’s not as loose as he’d been earlier in the evening; his movements are more taut. He proceeds down the courthouse steps as if there’s a hoard of reporters and cameramen at his back, and he doesn’t mean to part with anything but the one perfect soundbite, the one line he’ll stop time and energy and the _spinning of the earth on its axis_ to turn expertly on his heel, steel his jaw, and relate unto the masses._ _

__Perhaps he’s accepted it, or buried it, or done whatever mental gymnastics he needs to resume the act of being himself._ _

__It hits Carisi square in the chest, and he drops a step behind Barba._ _

__This, before him, is more of an act than what he saw captured on a co-ed’s iPhone._ _

__(If Carisi thinks he’s kept that thought to himself for not voicing it aloud, he’s woefully mistaken.)_ _

__"Why are you embarrassed? You're not, ya know, humble to the point of ignorance. You know you were great."_ _

__Barba doesn't know how to answer him; never mind the broadness of the question, the fact that he wants to be truthful is proving the greater hindrance. _I don't especially like it_ and _I didn't want to do it_ both sound ambivalent and unworthy of his frustration. He catches sight of the court house behind Carisi, columns and steps made black and white where the floodlights miss the shadows. _ _

__The building is beautiful, its purpose daunting. Barba wouldn’t have it any other way._ _

__He keeps walking._ _

__“I have this,” he says simply._ _

__The rest assumes itself at once in his mind, fully formed: _I am this. I am what I worked for. It’s infuriating to see others suspend reality to retool entire estimations of my character based on their presumption that **this** was my second choice.__ _

__He says absolutely nothing of the sort, of course. That would be humiliating._ _

__They don’t talk again, especially not after they stall at the first light and Carisi stupidly asks, “So what song are you gonna do?”_ _

__Barba rolls his eyes so fitfully, so completely, that his body physically echoes the trend: his left leg crosses over his right, he rolls a shoulder and turns his head to bury a cough. Carisi fears for an awful moment that the culmination of this gesture will result in Barba fully exiting the car._ _

__It doesn’t. _He_ doesn’t. There is one stop--Barba’s apartment building--and then another--one block away, as Carisi illegally parks on a sidestreet and stares up at the roof of his car wondering why he never does or says anything of consequence--and finally home, where Carisi tucks into another sleepless night, his mind abuzz with questions._ _

__He ruminates over what is fair game to want, whether a chance can be given or only ever won, and if he is reckless enough to play his long-held hand to completion._ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got too wordy, so this will conclude with a part 3. 
> 
> We all make poor choices sometimes, okay!!!!

“Mommy, _and then,_ and then, Mommy--”

“Slow down, sweet boy. Collect your thoughts. I want to hear them all.”

Noah stops and beams. His gap-toothed smile is always changing, and it’s one of the things Olivia Benson never guessed she’d find so intrinsic to her happiness and well-being. 

He takes a big, deliberate breath. They’ve practiced this. They’re _still_ practicing this, and are patient with one another in their varied attempts to get it right. 

At present, there’s nothing to fault for her son’s shaky grip on Lucy’s cell phone as they video chat during his walk home from school. Sometimes Noah loses sight of the front-facing camera, and all Benson gets is a view of the sky, but she can hear his prattle on excitedly about his day, about things he learned, friends he made, and his favorite letters to write.

He’ll tell it to her all over again tonight during dinner, but she likes the excitement he harbors in the moment. There’s heaps more sense derived from the ramblings of a child than much of what she hears in a day, poison-soaked and sugar-coated from the lips of grown men attempting to mask their heinous appetites. 

She thinks Barba would understand, if she could get around the inherent awkwardness of comparing her motherhood to his career. Unlike Rollins, who aches for what she’s lost and is reaching out and accepting compromise, Benson is hopeful for all there is yet to gain, for everything to be entirely different from all she’s ever known. She’s hopeful for happiness. She’s mindful of this new life, still uneasy when it comes to committing to things she’d never truly believed she could have. 

Benson can see Noah’s arm extended, his hand held tight in Lucy’s. _It should be mine,_ she thinks, but not at all bitterly. One day it will be, maybe as soon as the weekend, or even today, if she can duck out early enough that they can walk the three blocks to their favorite ice cream place after dinner. And even so, there is exemplary cause for her not to run rampant through the streets for that sole want. There are responsibilities enough to keep her seated. 

Though the call has ended, Benson is still staring at her phone. She’s lost in that perennial world of parenthood in absence. Carisi, for knocking and subsequently entering her office, recognizes this at once. He shrinks back, a move born of muscle memory from when his mother would take the hose to stray neighborhood cats and Carisi, for always chasing after them, got caught in the spray.

“Am I interrupting? I’m sorry, I’ll go, it’s not important--”

The trance is broken and Benson ushers him in.

“What’s up?”

She asks this because Carisi doesn’t immediately start into some idea or thought or plan of action. A rare show of hesitation from him is interesting enough in its own right, but it’s the coming explanation that really twists in the back of Benson’s mind. What will Carisi say that he can’t give at the outset? What will a patient stare and kind eyes take from him?

It’s a regular line of thought, though not a normal one. 

Benson knows the particular bend in her curiosity is a byproduct of her work as a detective: when so much time and energy is given to laying out others’ reasoning towards some particular end, one tends to grow absent from their own faculties.

It’s was Stabler’s problem. It was almost Benson’s, once.

An unexamined life fast became the only liveable one. 

It’s something she’s learned to detect in others, and for doing so, tries to put herself ahead of that space, and coax them out into the open. She both narrows the passage and broadens sights towards a better possibility. 

Part of her reasoning is entirely personal: the loves and cares for these people, and their wellbeing in well in her interests. The rest she can chalk up to best practices and mindfulness towards her already short-staffed office. If a budding problem starts to crawl into and wind up and choke the life out of its host, she’s more than a man down--she’ll have failed others where she herself was lifted up and helped. 

And besides all that--besides the morality play that tends to her need to do right in a world that wrongs so many--she’s curious as to what is _finally_ stifling Carisi’s _ever-running mouth._

Carisi sits. His hands immediately start running down the length of his thighs to grip his knees. He knows he shouldn’t have sat for this; his anxiety is better disguised if given the opportunity to disperse about his body, to run up and down gesticulating limbs and to chase one motion after the next. Sitting just allows for all his nervous energy to get comfortable.

“I’d like--if it’s okay--to request this Friday night off. I’d appreciate not being on call. Uh. This Friday. The tenth. Of September.” 

“Done.”

An explanation isn’t necessary; Carisi’s banked more than enough overtime to merit this small favor. But when Benson asks if he has plans, the friendly smile on her face is just that: sincere interest in a colleague’s life, idling hope that he’s found some small glimmer of joy in the world, something outside of the work worth holding fast to.

It’s most assuredly _not_ an interrogation, nevermind what the sudden slickness of his palms and dryness of mouth suggest. 

Carisi knows he could tell her only, “it’s personal,” and she’d respectfully drop the matter. Rollins would needle it out of him, of course, if only because she’s a glutton for gossip, a bloodhound for reticence, and her only real objective is to confirm what she already knows to be true. It’s a game for Rollins, who doesn’t care about what she’s won until after she’s won it. 

With Benson, there are no cards, no chips, no wins or losses. There’s not so much as a table on which to play. 

It’s open combat of a different kind. 

It’s the difference between speaking and being heard, and speaking and being known. 

“I’m going to a, uh, thing. A charity thing. For legal assistance and… I actually haven’t read beyond the acronym, uhm, LACANY--?"

Benson blinks, uncertain if she’s heard correctly.

“Not McCoy’s charity?”

Carisi realizes he can’t answer that, not phrased as it is, an inherent misstep of his own radical making.

He asks instead, a chalky-tongued: “You’re going?”

“I have a standing invitation, but,” she purses her lips, not sure of how much to say and how to say it. Something in the uncomfortable pitch of Carisi's shoulders--downwards, while his voice ascends, and neither intersect--gives her direction, so she chances the lot: “Rafael asked that I not attend.”

Carisi sinks a veritable foot in his chair. 

“He tell you why?”

Carisi already knows--it’s obvious in the shame he radiates for asking _her._

They don't need to rehash it, Benson decides. Carisi is speaking as though to keep the matter secret, and Benson agrees in principle. While their friend is deserving of a wealth of discussion in his own right, she's hesitant. 

There's been cause for that recently, with idling threats against his life meriting a breakdown of his schedule, his company, his _haunts._

(He'd caught himself like a fish on that line, and joked, "Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves?") 

Even for being practical and purposeful and discreet, it was an awful conversation to have. Her thinking was, a familiar face mediating between Barba and the officers in Threat Assessment would make for an easier relay of information. But Barba answered their questions and accepted their terms well enough on his own, and all Benson came away with was a sense she’d overstepped into something deeply personal. 

His life, put to paper, was slim. There was work, spread equidistant between his office, the courthouse, and the precinct. His preferred coffee shops and bars were along that route. His apartment was his one escape, though he admitted to spending the occasional night in his office. On Saturdays he’d sometimes go to the park, or catch a Broadway matinee, or wander a bookstore. On Sundays, if he couldn’t otherwise avoid it, he had brunch with his mother in their old neighborhood. 

It was a life expelled in one breath, and in the silence that followed was the sentiment, asked and answered, _Is that it?_

He’d huffily asked how far back they needed to know about, and imbued in the question was an unspoken defense: _It wasn’t always like that. There used to be so much more._

And it wasn’t merely a bruised ego making the machinations of words, either. Between Barba and Benson, a single thought formed itself in damning detail: that while Barba brought his notoriety with him from Brooklyn to Manhattan SVU, he’d left the trappings of an audacious life worthy of such a reputation behind. Where there were once parties and friends and time enough for lovers and lovers spats, work had since flooded those spaces, claimed every inch and expelled all else. 

Benson had watched realization tighten Barba’s expression, watched as he shifted with practiced ease into nonchalance, then mirth, concluding the meeting with a pronounced, _“So we can all agree I’d be a great loss.”_

He wasn’t sorry for himself--only shocked and a little dismayed. 

Knowing what she does of his current circumstance--wherein, no one is actively trying to kill him, but he may very well die of embarrassment--Benson is all the more sorry his efforts to regain a little of what he left behind have turned on him so fully.

Turned in such a way that _Carisi_ knows, and knows to be _coy about it,_ no less.

She swipes open her phone and, to answer Carisi’s question, reads from a text: “‘Liv, regarding Friday. I am being roped into something for which I am most assured to make a total fool of myself. Because I value the respect we have for one another, I’d rather you did not attend, and remember me as I was.’” 

Carisi’s grinning well before she’s through, and Benson supposes that much is earned. She feels a little lighter for the exchange.

“That’s a text?” Carisi asks, more brazen now but still mindful of who they are discussing, and how. “He didn’t have that nailed to your door in the middle of the night by a messenger on horseback?” 

“It’s… a little dramatic.” Benson doesn’t add that Barba walked it back once he sobered up, though the sentiment went unchanged. 

Benson is quiet for a moment, and watchful. She takes note of the ease at which Carisi teases after Barba, and understands why she’s not raising any hackles for the incursion. It isn’t one. 

She is, suffice to say, surprised.

It’s a creeping half-thought, only, which in itself is a product of Barba’s own divvying out of personal details--he’s feast or famine, there is never a single course meal. He’ll tell her he feels responsible for his grandmother’s death, that his father was abusive in every sense of the word, that growing up his mother adored his more genial friend Alex and he never could bring himself to blame her for it. But Benson can’t name a single friend he’s mentioned, even in passing. She doesn’t know if he has--or has ever had--a pet. She doesn’t know if he goes home and ever cooks himself a proper meal and sits to consume it, or if he feeds by handfuls, always.

She knows he’s had his heart broken, but did it ever mend?

It’s all there in hindsight: the phasing out of the hero-worship and calculated put-downs, the quiet disregard of their egos, the genuine hurt when the other disappoints. There’s something else, too, besides professional admiration and bewildering interest. It’s a new breed of attention each pays to the other, and for being quiet and careful, it softens them both. 

But it’s merely light playing upon a word, casting shadows from its likeness. 

Carisi’s grandiose crush--for it was always and originally and undisputedly that--did not level, burn out, or escalate too far too fast. It developed. With Barba’s tacit permission and eventual participation, they finally arrived _here,_ at such a point where Barba needs a kind of support he cannot--for further humiliation--ask for outright, but that which Carisi sees clear in his sights as his prerogative. 

Benson thinks, without meaning to, they’ve come to an understanding regarding Barba, who has proven himself as reserved with his private life as he is bombastic with his public image. Laid like mismatched game pieces on a chessboard are the things they feel for him, what they are due to give as friends and would-be lovers. Her word is her distance; there isn’t any leeway when it comes to respectability. Carisi has room to roam, and soon will. 

“I genuinely think he’ll be great,” Carisi admits quietly. “And, uh, I want to be the one to tell him so.” 

Benson takes these details, forges them together, and whets them to a sure and fine point. This is isn’t a first step into new territory; it’s him planting his two feet on the ground and conceding nothing after. 

“And you’re prepared for… however that’s going to go?”

She means the event, Barba’s involvement in it, and whether or not Carisi’s presence will be interpreted as a slight. 

(Benson herself once walked that fine line early in her friendship with Barba, nearly scuttling the whole operation when she ordered him a decaf.)

Carisi has something else on his mind entirely.

“Oh, shit. Do you know something? Did he say--” Carisi stops himself from gushing, but the scarlet coloring his cheeks says the whole of it. 

"So it's like that." _You’re **smitten.**_

Rather than answering her--with the truth or a lie, whichever presented itself first--Carisi wonders if feigning a stroke or narcolepsy wouldn't be a more prudent response. Benson won’t be fooled, of course, but the cringing shame of the moment would closer associate itself with his embarrassment, and less so with the intentions he's just uncovered. 

"Maybe," he says, which is, along the spectrum of truths, nearer the more regrettable end. There’s a whole living, breathing likelihood that Friday is neither the time nor the place, that Carisi does himself in by chancing it, and Barba will resent him too much to consider anything like what they’ve been playing towards.

"Only if he's not the type just to… pretend. And laugh about it later." 

"That doesn't sound like the Rafael I know." 

She's overstepping, _she knows this,_ but the outcome obliterates the sickly warmth of regret ballooning in the back of her throat. 

Carisi relaxes. 

It shouldn't be so grand a thing, except Benson realizes she's never seen him at ease. Being all sharp limbs and Staten Island tones, she's always figured 'dizzy, excitable child stood atop a ladder' for his baseline. 

Instead, he sits transformed: a dopey smile no longer restrains this enormous piece of himself he's managed to keep silent, but rests with it on the surface, idling like a sunbather. His shoulders sink back and his posture softens. He still can't quite look her in the eye, but his gaze has drifted up from the floor, at least. He seems contemplative. 

"Yeah. Me neither." 

Benson draws and holds a breath. She's made her share of bad choices--many born of excruciating silence or deafening noise, many more still from misattributed feelings, desperation parading as intrigue parading as fondness. Of all her own life's missteps, she cannot fathom a one that arose so softly as this. 

Perhaps it's not a mistake Carisi is making. 

Perhaps it is a measured act--a deed, even, made with considerable deliberation and forethought. 

Regardless, she could squelch it now, if she gathers every conceivable reservation and names an excuse. She could do as little as pull a face or generate a half-formed noise, inherently doubtful.

She does not want to, and--more damningly still--does not feel the need.

It's true, she doesn't know if this is something Barba wants, doesn't know if Carisi is wrong to even approach the matter. Barba hasn't had that conversation with her. All she knows for certain is the trepidation in her Detective's voice can't wholly mask the resolve; she knows his are instincts she's had to trust with her life, and would do so again. And though she can't be sure, but she gets the feeling Carisi has a greater insight, here. 

What's a life to a heart, if not a lateral move? 

“You’re off the clock,” she promises, and it isn't until the last syllable leaves her tongue that she tastes its merit. 

She draws her glasses back on, and it’s the dismissal Carisi’s waiting for, because he practically jumps at its issuance. 

She adds, "Good luck.” 

Carisi twists back around.

“I’ll tell him you said so,” he says hurriedly. Benson knows he’s likely regretting giving away so much, especially if he hadn't yet decided to deliver those thoughts to Barba himself.

“No," she says, light as air, "that’s all for you.”

She can’t help but toy with him a little; she’s no saint.

-

There’s heat ballooning all over the city. It holds and stifles and holds and stifles until Friday afternoon, when the sky darkens and rain looms like a promise, not a threat.

For being in court all day, neither Barba nor Carisi see it, but a change is felt all the same. Suddenly, ties and collars are tightened again, and suit jackets don’t feel so constricting. 

And when Barba can move, _he moves._ It’s some fancy footwork to start: he places names, dates, witnesses in an intricate pattern. He walks over and through them, linking them with ease.

He lays out family and friends, the soft groundwork a man like their suspect needs to pad his exterior when the world turns a critical eye. 

A ferocious turn in a cross examination seals the case in their favor. The move is Barba’s alone, and it is as deliberate as the lavender dress shirt he buttoned up and paisley tie he knotted. 

He loops a question--a softball, even--around the room. He lets it lie, retreats, and allows the suspect to build his own case on the backs of others. His wife was sick, his child was crying, he’d just been put on bogus administrative leave--when was he going to find the time to harass, corner, and assault the housekeeper? 

“Of course,” Barba says when the man heaves up own defense. “Of course.”

_“However.”_

He’s been laying the groundwork since day one; today was the closing number. He didn’t drive a hard line through his point, but wove around it, jumping hurdles, allowing a breath of doubt to fill the space.

_“However.”_

Barba drives a pinhole in the man’s sense of self, and the world of lies he’s built up to assure others of that fact, to float his notions of being a good man, a good father, a good brother. Barba steps around his creation to show this deed does not undo all he’s said, but negates it entirely. Because it is easier for a coward to establish an entire fantasy than to make one real, good thing.

Barba tightens the ripcord and lets the defendant hang himself spectacularly. He offers a denial, the man takes it. Barba proves that one false, too.

Angry and riled and _disabused of his own fabrications,_ the man follows Barba back through that artfully narrow path, tearing it asunder and sinking himself for the effort.

It is masterful to see.

Besides the necessary means of securing the verdict, the outcome--no, his ability to render it so clearly--assures Barba of what it is he’s been doubting: that he is who he is by virtue of what he does. There are talented truth-seekers just as there are talented liars; what separates them is the work.

Everything-- _everything_ \--is decided in that moment. 

For every member of the jury, every onlooker in the gallery, and one Detective in particular, the path forward is brilliantly clear.

-

Carisi can spot the stage the moment he enters the space. Despite the high ceilings and great open views of the City from wall-to-floor windows, the hall is surprisingly intimate. Round tables, already placed and marked for its sitters, are cloistered together, with space only for chairs to draw out in tight orbits. People are either standing amid them or lounging at the bar. 

There’s twinkling piano music playing, along with a small accompaniment. Carisi spots DA Jack McCoy at the foot of the stage, speaking animatedly with a tall, brown-haired woman Carisi figures for his daughter. Between them is Barba. 

Even with his back turned, Carisi knows the suit, the stance, the squared shoulders. He knows the hand that raises to needlessly smooth the back of his hair.

Carisi feels an instant, ready dread for what he’s done--coming here, invited, sure, but profoundly out of place. His badge and gun are off his belt, his hair a little looser, but there’s no mistaking his stalking about the room for a cop’s walk. Even his gaze is inherently a discerning one. 

He wonders how obvious it looks. It's true, if he's so much as stood behind one of these people at a coffee shop, he's informed them he's studying law at Fordham. But even the prosecutors and judges he spies aren't here by virtue of their appreciation of the law--they're here for knowing Jack McCoy, or his daughter Rebecca, or some other reaching arm of policy and activism in the City.

Carisi doesn't know a person here except specifically, deliberately, _one._

Or two, as it happens.

Carmen appears at Carisi’s side, her steely-eyed disposition placing her in a position of some importance, despite being a guest here herself. As in Barba’s office, she moves about unphased, as though every incursion is expected. 

Although any of her usual office attire would suffice for the evening--a chic dress or sharp skirt, all blacks or slates or brightest whites--she’s forgone her usual fare, and wears instead a tailored suit the color of mulled wine. Between the narrow lapels is a peak of her top, inky black to the point of looking wet. 

“Where are you seated?”

She prefaces this with a polite smile and a beat of time for Carisi to take it in. It's a formality, only. 

He shows her where an usher had pointed him when he first arrived. She circles the table once and, after glancing at some of the names of those Carisi will be sitting with, she decides otherwise. With unflappable confidence, she plucks the small name card from the table and replaces it with one she’d already tucked away from her and Barba’s table.

“Judge Bertuccio won’t be missed,” she says simply, and guides Carisi away.

Carisi laughs nervously as she sets the card down anew. “Should you just do that?”

She looks at him, confused as to why he would even ask when they both _know_ he has no intention of undoing the change.

“Are you going to arrest me?”

Carisi bites into his own tongue, puts his hands up, and takes the hit.

To placate the detective's more delicate sensibilities, Carmen allows: “Judge Bertuccio rarely makes these events. And if he does, he won’t stray far from the bar.” 

She quirks a smile not unlike her boss's, sharp and cool, as if she can see leagues into a single conversation, and thinks all the effort Carisi is making to keep up is _sweet._ Carisi’s more than a little unnerved by the relation. 

She flags down a passing waiter and secures them some drinks. It doesn’t matter what; Carisi would have downed drain cleaner if it had a wedge of lime along the rim. He swallows a mouthful and lets the burn coat his throat, spice his tongue. 

He comes away thinking a second sip would braze the skin off his spine, so he refrains. 

“You’re here as--I guess--”

"I'm Mr. Barba's date," Carmen interrupts, saving Carisi the trouble. "I told him to invite someone for moral support. He refused."

The sentiment is willfully devoid of irony. 

Carisi looks around the room. Most everyone nearby is engaged in their own conversations, and the fact that he feels he ought to be cagey around something that is mere minutes away from happening is absurd. 

Yet he drops his voice all the same.

"Have you heard him sing before?" 

"Never," she says, and Carisi believes her. 

He hears bubbling laughter somewhere behind him and downwind of the bar. He knows it’s not Barba among the revellers, but he’s curious all the same. Another group he sees walking in includes two other District Attorneys, and an EADA out of Queens. 

The EADA--Maria Fuentes--is someone Barba mentioned to Carisi in the past as being worth reaching out to, if ever he was interested in progressing in his career as a detective-turned-lawyer. _She likes a story,_ Barba had told him. _She’ll love yours._

"I don't know that I should be here.”

Carisi doesn’t mean to say it aloud, but the sentiment is practically trained on a loudspeaker in his head, and if Carmen had bent her ear to his tight-lipped self, she’d have heard it regardless. 

"I don't know about that," she returns, sounding deceptively certain for so vague a response. 

She retrieves her phone and sets it face up on the shiny black tabletop. A few swipes produces the last string of texts between herself and Barba, which she puts in front of Carisi, an open invitation. 

The day’s conversation comes in at the end of innocuous discussion during work hours: _[The Clement file?]_ and _[Arraignment, see you in 20]_

Timestamped an hour ago are: _[I'm sending a car.]_ and _[Of course I'm sending a car.]_

Precisely two minutes ago, after Carisi first spotted Barba with his back turned: _[Is that Carisi with you? Why?]_

And now, a follow-up: _[???]_

"He's _shy."_

She says this dully, almost dutifully. Like it’s a phrase she was once given, not a conclusion she arrived at naturally. 

And though it isn’t much, it’s enough to be shown by another’s hand that he’s being thought of, seen, and considered. There’s enough that Carmen deems fit to comment in her way, to speak without a word to scandalize either party, and tighten their orbit. 

But it’s nothing Carisi can accept and be satisfied with. If there are words to be spoken, intentions to be affirmed, he needs them from Barba--and nothing so sly, neither. 

"Excuse me," Carisi says as he stands, but Carmen isn't listening. 

She's texting back, _[Incoming]._

-

He’s furious.

He’s furious, he thinks, or else he ought to be.

Agreeing to this or succumbing to it first felt indistinguishable as choices, but not any more. Now consequence has overtaken dread, and Barba only sees how he has wrought this night on himself. 

Had he been quicker on his feet, McCoy would not have been able to tether him to this task. He could have asked McCoy to repeat himself, if only to solidify the request's absurdity, and allow the thing to die exposed. Or he could have _lied,_ quite frankly. Said he'd be out of the city and then booked a flight to make it so. 

Instead, he’s corralled himself into the rodeo. While he changed his attire from the more eye-catching pinks and lilacs coloring his appearance in court, his selection is no less a marker for attention: a dark charcoal suit and crisp white shirt more or less constitute the uniform throughout the room on every male-shaped body. Barba’s accessorized with only the cornflower blue of his pocket square--a simple necessity, he'd thought, as it was the organization's signature color. A single nod to the cause that would soon massacre his reputation, and--depending on how the night goes--a token with which to wave away his self-respect. 

There is no tie. 

He’s an outlier in that respect, which isn’t unusual for a man who owns no fewer than nineteen pairs of suspenders. In this room, the open collar displaces him more than his present choice of navy braces with orange accents. Like the rest, he _has_ just come from the office, but he doesn’t _look_ like it. He’s a separate entity, having arrived for a unique and peculiar purpose.

It’s a sharp look, as least as of twenty minutes ago when he was last able to dash into the men’s washroom to inspect his bare throat for hives. He’d aggressively scrubbed his hands and tried to guess: is he awash in courage or lacking all good sense? Is any private act made public not an unholy marriage of the two? 

The answer feels known when he sees Carisi, all six-odd-feet of him trying to skulk around unnoticed. 

"If you bought a plate just to be here, you’re dumber than you look," Barba hissed. And, fearing that only came off as too harsh, offered evidence: “Your tie is crooked.”

"Jesus--God--no. I didn’t buy a plate. I couldn't afford that. I have student loans." Carisi looks desperate on every count. "I swear."

Barba believes him, but that’s never been reason enough not to win an argument. He folds his arms across his chest and stipulates, "I'm not arguing whether or not you could afford it, just if you'd do it regardless." 

“McCoy called the day after-- _after._ " Even here, now, at the very summit of the event, Carisi affords it the cover Barba needs. "Said it was rude of him not to extend an invitation to me, uh, having been in the room and all. So he did. On the spot.”

Barba wrinkles his nose in disapproval; that, unfortunately, sounds like something McCoy would do.

“And so you thought you’d come and make my humiliation complete.” 

“I thought I’d cheer you on,” Carisi says, wincing for how useless it sounds. He doubles down, hand gestures and all: “Rah, rah, sis boom bah, and all that.” 

Barba, at least touched by another’s self-imposed humiliation, smirks at that. 

“Are you opening for me?”

“I got a whole routine. With jumps.”

Finally, Barba drops his arms to his sides. 

“Walk with me,” he says, already moving. Carisi is at once three strides behind, but his long legs catch him up in one. 

They fall insync with one another, Barba taking the inside track and Carisi doing the move cumbersome job of keeping pace while not lumbering into anyone. The latter does not register as a concern for Barba.

They walk until Barba finds what he’s been searching for: as private a space as he’s going to find in a floor-to-ceiling windowed floor of a skyscraper open to the whole of lower Manhattan. It’s a crumb of an annex just beyond the elevators. Finally, Carisi gets a feel for the building’s strangeness: the panelled floor-to-ceiling windows extend even to the corner, and pick back up on the other side of the elevators. The end result is a grand, deceptively cylindrical building with a thick seam running up it. The grand view isn’t for every floor; it alternates. Carisi knows this for a fact, having once Mirandized a suspect while hauling him out of the accounting firm on the seventh floor.

Barba, for leading the way, ends up at the narrowest point from where their rounded corner twists and cuts off at an angle. A design flaw, really, that’s headed off with a single decorative side table and a vase bursting with heaving stems of flowered gladiolus. They’re pastel pink and white and altogether too soft for the city, which broadcasts itself even here, some stories up. 

Below them, two cop cars have their lights flashing, splashing red and blue up the sides of mirrored buildings which then, in turn, take on pinks and purples as lights tapers and darkness bleeds them of their stronger hues. The black tar streets, recently wet from a brief bout of rainfall, glitter and shine. The whole city looks alive, breathing in the dark. 

Even for the city spilling out below them, Barba looks cloistered. 

“Can I get you a drink--?”

“I shouldn’t.”

“--of water?” 

Barba breaks with a single hysterical laugh. He turns, sees there’s literally nowhere for him to go, and turns back, gesturing wildly, as if to say, _See? A metaphor!_

He takes in a sharp, too-fast breath, then another, and several more that only slow by single degrees. Carisi is reminded of Barba during the whole Dr. Carl Rudnick affair, pitchy and breathless and verging in frenzied as incompetence after incompetence mounted to produce several more murders than the one they’d started with.

To his credit, _this_ was not _that._ And eventually, Barba searches for calm differently than he had, then (in that, he doesn't storming out of the building and start pounding the pavement until he has to order a Lyft to get him back to his office in time for another briefing).

He wets his lips, thinks how he could use that drink of water, wonders if Carisi himself isn’t another necessary thing that just won’t come his way, if--

“Jesus,” Carisi blurts out, and with a hand on either of Barba’s shoulders, physically angles him towards the view of their shimmering city below. “Can you just--look out there? For a minute? I’ll be right back.”

It’s forty-five seconds out that he’s back with a bottle of water.

He twists and breaks the seal for Barba and everything.

Barba accepts this token, but takes so miniscule a sip that his throat isn’t even cleansed for the effort. Paradise lay on his tongue, and only briefly. 

“Justice. You know?”

Carisi rears back. “Uh-huh?”

Hurriedly--as if his point is darting well ahead of him--Barba continues: “I’m passionate about justice. Executing it, understanding it, using the law to actualize it within a society.” He raises the bottle for another sip, but forgoes it for a thought: “It’s serious work. I’m a serious person. I don’t--I can’t--” 

The elevator chimes with the arrival of still more guests and donors. Barba keeps still, but Carisi knows between the inherent awkwardness of the building’s luxury design and his own height, no one will spot the ADA. All the same, Barba waits until they’ve gone to admit what it is, precisely, that exists beyond the embarrassment, beyond pride, beyond his reputation to unnerve him so fatally.

“It feels _trivial.”_

Carisi doesn't go with the first thought, or even his second or third. They're all adamant defenses, points to the contrary, and feverish denials. There's no convincing Barba of anything without a strong argument, and Carisi knows he doesn't have enough information to build one. 

But Barba _does,_ so Carisi lays that task at his feet.

“On its own, or compared to what you’ve chosen to do?”

Barba purses his lips and says nothing, which is answer enough. He knows he feels conflicted; he knows his reasons aren't those he's proud of. 

Carisi would rather turn towards the view, to likewise shield himself from being wholly seen while saying what he means to. It's nothing like the flirting they've done, which has been every shade of cheeky. In this instance, if he says anything, he'll say it all. The sincerity will damn him.

“It’s still beautiful," he says, and the wide-eyed look it earns him is nothing like what he wants. It's been his fervent hope that they'd understand one another by now, that all their flirting was a cumulative and driving force towards a tangible result. Instead, Barba looks as though he suddenly can't take a genuine compliment, and hopes Carisi won't force such an exchange into existence. 

(His foot's on the gas. There's no stopping now.)

Carisi continues, "Even if you don’t find it particularly righteous. It can still feel… really meaningful. It felt that way to me.”

“My shitty, drunken karaoke?” Barba's eyes narrow, and he asks this through punctuated pauses, like he's got Carisi dead to rights.

 ** _“Yeah!”_** Carisi can't help but answer over-loud and exasperated, which shocks the apprehension from Barba's system. There's a fleeting moment where Barba looks as pleased as possible--his smile twists and his gaze flits over his own shoulder, like it's too special a thing to be witnessed by idling eyes--but it quickly loses its place and falls under the same furrowed brow that casts a shadow on so many of their lighter moments. 

Carisi can see the very instant when Barba confronts, then disagrees with and discards what he's been given. 

(He’d be annoyed for the indifference, except that he’s come to realize it isn’t entirely personal.)

Carisi digs into it instead, stuffing his hands into his pockets and twisting from the hip as if slightly unscrewed. He’s the physical manifestation of both a _hem_ and a _haw._

“But, ya know, I’m not a very _serious,_ very _passionate_ person out there _actualizing justice,_ so what do I know--”

"That's _plenty,_ thank you." 

Barba rolls his eyes and turns away. He's even smiling, until he's not. He stares outside, into the narrow crevasses aligned between buildings. From his angle, Carisi has a view of Barba’s reflection, the expression smoothing itself out in practiced perfection. 

“I don’t know why I’m nervous,” he says, all bluster, as though trying to inspire some of the genuine stuff in himself.

“Me neither," Carisi concurs, with the exception being his total sincerity. His true earnestness shines through, a sun going supernova. “You’re gonna do great.” 

Barba stares, then blinks and looks away. He’s said so before, though he’s certain it’s only ever been misunderstood: _Carisi is entirely too much._

“This is a joke," he says quietly. He’s done bemoaning it; he’s at a point now where he lays into that fact and feels nothing but quiet, steady dread. The panic burned fast and bright, and smoldering earth is all that’s left. The reality is only minutes away before cementing itself in the minds of colleagues, superiors, and all those unknown faces with the kind of untold sway the city is famous for. What if--God forbid--he ever seeks the D.A. position? Or a judgeship? What if someone in this very room, a decade from now, remembers him for a shameless showman? What if that’s as good a reason as any to lend him their full support?

What if he takes to the stage an ADA, and leaves a lark? 

“Doesn’t have to be,” Carisi says with a shrug. “McCoy didn’t give the worst advice.”

Barba rests against the window. Maybe the workmanship is shotty. Even if a freak and grotesque fall spared him tonight, with his luck, Barba knows LMZ’s Lenny Simmons would get in one last dig: _Barba can sing like a bird, but could he fly?_

“Lean into it?” 

“S’all I got, Counselor.”

Barba looks him dead in the eye. 

“How disappointing.” 

They’ve been here before, and though neither man can place the moment exactly--not by phrase or circumstance--it feels old and tired. Carisi especially feels they’ve walked circles enough to drive a pit in the earth. If they take another lap, they’ll be in over their heads and lost for daylight.

Outside and stories down, the cop cars move along. One last flash of pink throws itself across Barba’s face. It bends across his cheek and paints his eyelashes in such vivid brilliance that Carisi cannot think for its example.

It’s just as well that the words don’t come; they’ve only ever been a precursor. 

The kiss is over before it really begins. Carisi, realizing in the tilt-turned moment what he was doing, rips it in half, leaving Barba slightly open-mouthed and shining. The city’s spilled light is gone from his face, but there’s a world more to see lit up by the inquisitive spark in his eye.

“Shit,” Carisi says, not meaning it, but thinking the moment is due an exclamation. “Uh. I just--I thought that might help.”

“It didn’t hurt.” 

Barba can admit: if he thought about this happening-- _when_ he thought about it--he always skirted past the good stuff and arrived at the end result. He fully expected it--the interest, the intrigue, the drive--to shrink on sight. _Wither_ was the word that fast came to mind. When ceded to action and tested by deed, this thing they kept alive would languish without the playful dithering on, the kneading of that block of space they held between one another. 

It doesn’t. 

It thrives.

Barba feels it like great gulps of air taken out of his chest.

It fully intends to _live._

With a hand to Carisi’s cheek, the other over the silken stripe of grey down his shirtfront, Barba gives himself into this fog of hot-wet breath that won’t burn away. 

It’s a toss-up as to whether he’s expelling his nervous energy, or if Carisi is its antidote. His very chemical bonds are coming unglued, and from the dislodged pieces, Barba is able to form something entirely new.

The moment, despite all their angling and positioning and posturing for it for months on end--is strangely unadorned by expectation.

(Perhaps because the thing’s actual happening is cemented behind an elevator in a luxury-by-way-of-kitsch rental space.)

“Okay,” Barba says, breathless, but infinitely more himself. He gives Carisi a once-over, and from every shifting molecule of his expression, Carisi thinks Barba looks in turns pleased, bemused, and maybe even a little impressed.

Mild annoyance tops it off, but only just. Barba reaches out and straightens Carisi's tie, and the self-satisfaction returns in droves.

"Oh, thanks," Carisi says, his voice chalky and sparse for Barba running roughshod over his senses. "Could have been embarrassing." 

Barba narrows his eyes, but allows it. There’s no time for wittier remarks.

He glances at his watch and mutters, “Approaching event horizon.”


	3. Chapter 3

Carisi keeps his distance as they return to their table. He watches as Barba is routinely sidelined by faces he knows from intersecting careers or mere reputation; handshakes suffice for both. Those that don’t pay either of them any mind are the wealthy elite, out treating themselves to the kind of low-risk do-goodery that sustain their self-told myths of compassion and philanthropy. Carisi figures they’ll all dine on the night’s subject matter at least through the end of the month. 

Then, come October, a new cause du jour, another couple grand to write off, the same faces to be seen seeing.

Barba takes the seat to Carmen’s left, Carisi to her right. 

Though by the time Carisi joins them, they're both focused on their phones. For Carmen's near-imperceptible smirk and Barba's own unreadable expression, Carisi can't be certain they're not just texting one another. 

Others take their seats at the table, and while Carisi is drawn into a conversation with a retired judge, Barba quietly departs. Carisi looks to Carmen in question, but doesn’t get the opportunity to sink his teeth into a word of it; she’s first with an answer. 

"They're about to begin," she says, eyes still on her phone. "Rebecca will speak, introduce the cause and welcome returning donors. She'll pass it over to McCoy so people will remember why they’re here. And then… the inevitable." 

Sure enough, a gentle applause starts in the front of the room, and grows amid glasses singing against jewelry as they're set down. Rebecca McCoy takes the small stage, looking pristine in a black sheath dress. As she thanks her friends and esteemed donors, Carisi finally sees the resemblance: she has her father’s charm and with it, an easy, almost roguish smile. 

When she concludes her remarks to still more applause, Carisi catches sight of McCoy, whose been standing just to her right on stage, blocked by a reaching stretch of wall designed to mirror the panelling of the windows encompassing the room. The combined effect makes it appear as though the small stage setting is an outcropping in its entirety, either affixing itself to the side of the building or growing out from within it. 

Now that he knows to look, Carisi can see Barba tucked a little further beyond McCoy, stood straight-backed and in exacting profile. His strong nose and soft middle lead, and he cuts into the darkness with such resounding purpose that, unless one was searching for it, they wouldn't know the heaps of reservation mounting behind his focused stare. 

Carisi grows anxious during McCoy's rambling and academic introduction. The DA speaks for his daughter's cause, the kind of good donations of time and funds can provide, the ways and means their support can lesson the strain on a bloated legal system. Then he stops himself, gets self-reflective, and as an aside the audience tells them, like it's a secret, "Usually it just goes on like this." 

They chuckle delightedly. 

"Tonight we thought we'd try a livier kind of entertainment." 

As McCoy speaks, each line is punctuated by predictable, polite laughter. All that’s missing is a _but seriously, folks,_ and even that is implied. 

He says, “If you don’t know him, congratulations. He hasn’t convicted you of a crime yet."

He says, "Could be you’re more familiar with his recent work in karaoke bars. I wasn’t.”

He says, "I know he's not enjoying me going on about him… for so small a crowd."

He says, "I’m lucky to have him in my office, a fact for which he is well aware.” 

McCoy sobers and waves off any further fanfare--all of it his own creation, but nevermind that. “He’s as good a man as his cause. And he’s one of my best. Undisputedly so. Assistant District Attorney Rafael Barba.” 

Barba doesn’t hesitate; at this juncture, there’s no point.

(Carisi can only imagine, but for Barba, this absurd situation has a same-hearted twin: the thoughtful and considered instance wherein he orchestrated for a serial predator to strangle him with a belt in open court. In terms of narrative structure, Barba’s now taken his own belt off. If he doesn’t sing, he might as well pants himself.)

The exchange of the microphone picks up Barba saying _“Thank you, Jack,”_ which sounds entirely polite yet completely devoid of sincerity. Barba chances a glance at those gathered, but returns his gaze swiftly to McCoy as they part. Although he'd been surveying the crowd from their table, counting the backs of heads and extrapolating a final count based on the number of tables, it's another thing entirely to see the room seeing him. 

Barba smiles--not anxiously, but as a show of force. Carisi knows it’s nothing like what Barba feels, but that despite his trepidation, there’s resolve enough in him to go forth and gladly conquer. 

"Luis Pérez on the piano," he says, and the man--a taxi driver, another individual wrapped up in McCoy’s orbit and spun about into wider circles for his talents--laughs as people applaud. To Luis, Barba jokes under his breath and in Spanish, _"Don't fuck this up, Luis."_

Throughout the room, his hesitation is mostly literally unknown and casually overlooked. Only a select few signal their likeness with smiles. 

The music starts. 

Luis cants forward too much as he plays; he’s not professionally trained. Barba knew this much from having spoken to the man earlier, but feels a little miffed for it being common knowledge, now, to anyone with an eye for such things. 

Barba clocks this much and patterns a choice on it.

The music is lovely, the notes precise. It blankets the scene like a rush of fog obliterating the fine lines of a horizon. Barba wades into it and begins to sing.

There is some uneasy laughter to start, but the air is sucked out of it fast. The sound--a reverse gasp--is strangely appropriate. 

Idling bemusement cannot sustain itself among absolutes, and the fact that Barba can sing is a _certainty,_ arriving in such esteemed company as death and taxes. 

The song lilts and idles, until slowly it begins to sway, and soon it’s growing and becoming something Barba bears from himself rather than disperses. 

When Barba’s seemingly does not move for some time--nothing but the rise, rise, rise of his chest as he permits only function, but refuses to allow that there might be still more to give into beyond this ultimate surrender of his capabilities--the display germinates a baroque feel. A man, standing, producing the world’s own song feels somehow antiquated, though no less extravagant. It’s not inherently wrong, only _less than spectacular._

Perhaps in the very same second Carisi thinks it’s not working for him, Barba makes the connection. He breaks from it. 

It’s like his attire--he’s not committed to the aesthetic, to some precise picture that is never complete without all composite elements. (He doesn’t _need_ the tie.) Rather, he’s committed only to the very pinnacle of what he can accomplish. 

Most days have him in a courtroom, and so he tries cases, prosecutes criminals, and wins.

Tonight, he’s tasked with something else entirely. 

A great, sweeping crescendo delves just as deeply into a well of precious hurt, and Carisi feels the room collectively fall at Barba’s feet. 

There’s space now to _move._

Really, all he does is walk a few paces, then back. It’s not a great deal of effort for the tremendous outcome, which is this: he seems entirely at ease. 

And this: the overwrought sense of rigid formality is broken.

And this: Barba turns heads.

Because he’s sure Barba intends to do the same--and Carisi wants to be in the know should the matter arise later--Carisi seeks out McCoy. The DA is sitting with his daughter at a table littered with especially withered donors, and Carisi clocks him journeying from genuine confusion through to captivated, before landing finally on his most championed expression: a world-weary, _I-sure-saw-this-coming_ vibe. It’s mostly said in the arc and cant of his dark eyebrows. 

While he’s at it, Carisi looks to everyone else. He sees people fix onto Barba--intensely, but different than they do in a courtroom. They're just as rapt, just as intrigued, except it's not a shared sense of conviction blossoming over their faces, but awe, and delight. 

Barba sees this and responds in kind, stepping out that much further into song. It isn’t that he becomes careless; he remains profoundly focused on the task at hand, and inclined towards its seriousness. A ludacris request, yes--and Barba will never think of it otherwise--but like Carisi said, his carrying it out needn’t be clownish.

His resolve, his drive to always shatter expectations, are as much a show as anything he’s putting on. Carisi sees this much and, though he’s envious, knows it is an outcome derived from its host, and not a thing to be acquired offhandedly. 

There’s something happening now that tracks a crooked line back twenty years and north, up into the Bronx. Barba himself can’t quite name it, but some part of the dueling shame of where he came from and guilt of leaving like he did is torn apart in this bizarre exhibition of his old self amid his new existence. 

It doesn’t solve anything.

Nothing concludes, nothing is tied up nicely and answered for. 

But the bleeding is staunched. 

And the demented promise of a lifelong kinship between guilt and fear bears a few new fractures. 

It’s not McCoy’s intention to disillusion Barba of the notion that he’s nothing of what he once was, that he’s remade himself in every way that matters. There is no such grand conspiracy, though that doesn’t stop Barba from feeling the connection and wondering for its purpose.

(Carisi _won’t_ know all this for several months, until their relationship changes in ways he can’t yet begin to hope, and Barba tells him, plainly and without delay for its asking, because this much is assured. This much comes with the territory.)

What Carisi decides in the interim is this: if Barba can stand before his colleagues, superiors, and the city’s elite, and do this favor--asked or imposed or otherwise demanded of him--then Carisi can push his petty concerns of disregard aside, if only for one more fearless second. 

He's going to ask Barba out. He's decided. They'll meet somewhere green before autumn strips it of its teeming life. They’ll go for a walk, talk for hours. The destination will be as ample and easy a reward for as tedious as they’ve made the journey.

The first kiss has been taken and returned, after all.

Dinners shared a hundred times over. 

A date is merely a formality, now.

Carisi is giddy for the realization, and is certain he wears it on his face. 

He trades an idyllic future for a mystifying present. Carisi wants to get lost in the moment, but there’s nowhere else to go; Barba consumes the room. His voice simultaneously fills the song and bends it to his own designs. 

And for every gaze pitched forward, every body realigned to face Barba, Carisi feels like he could strip naked and wade through the tightly-set tables entirely unnoticed. There isn’t time, though that’s hardly what stops him. 

The song is coming to an end, and with it, Carisi’s wild curiosity for its singer. Instead, Carisi has conclusions.

Barba has a wonderful talent, its display seemingly effortless and endlessly divine. But the act is almost assuredly something that Barba’s done in the company of friends, only, _ever,_ and moreover, _with_ the right company, it’s done with wild abandon and raucous charm. 

Tonight is something else; tonight is an exhibition of will.

Those who don’t know Barba--the monied bulk of the room--and therefore cannot appreciate what they’ve seen, nonetheless clap gamely for the performance. They turn to one another and are in agreement: _Wonderful. How nice for us._

Those who know Barba for the showy, ruthless, and clever ADA that he is are either stunned to silence or have leapt to their feet and essentially began _shouting._

(Lisa Hassler keeps seated, but delivers a piercing whistle.)

Carisi doesn’t stand; he’s certain Barba is mortified by the whole display--and offended for the whistling. It’s just as well that Carisi can see through it all, anyway, and find Barba, awkwardly trying to extricate himself from a handshake from Luis. Finally, McCoy arrives to take back the microphone, which ought to be Barba’s escape but isn’t. Carisi catches Barba’s eye as he listens to McCoy laugh and exclaim something charming like, _You could have told me you were good. I’ve been losing sleep over it._

Eventually McCoy continues with procedure, mentions the silent bidding and welcomes everyone to enjoy their meal and the open bar. Barba circles around the space and returns to their table from behind, as covert as any man can while wearing a cornflower blue pocket square and a blush that only seems to grow rather than subside. Carmen lays a hand over his forearm and gives it a gentle squeeze--a gesture in kind for Carisi, who can’t make the move himself.

"That was lovely," Carmen says, the picture of composure and restraint. 

“You were great. _So great._ And, see?" Carisi gestures around them, indicating the unmistakable lack of booing, maniacal laughter, and pitchforks. 

Barba purses his lips; he knows he didn't steal through the fray completely unmarred.

“Someone asked if I did weddings.”

Carisi rears back and his face twists up, consumed by a pitiful attempted mirroring of what came so naturally to Carmen. 

Subtlety and nonchalance are nearer his Achilles heal than the backbone of his character, and Barba, for seeing through it, does not hesitate to call it out.

“What were you going to say. What awful joke--”

“I didn’t have it yet!" Carisi protests, their conversation now fully taking place over Carmen, who leans back just enough in her seat to allow for it. “It was something… how about a private audience, an--”

“An encore?”

Carisi waves a hand; closer, but not quite. “There was another element to it.”

There are glasses of wine at the table already, and Barba briefly considers his before landing on the fact that he doesn't much care _what_ he drinks to obliterate this night, only _that_ he drinks to obliterate this night. 

“Why am I here if not to sing in front of my boss and half of City council, and workshop your punny lines.”

Carisi lands on the line, then mumbles it into the lip of his drink. The look Barba is giving him makes the cocktail taste all the sweeter.

“What was that?”

Carisi clears his throat. 

“I said, 'Maybe not a wedding, but a one _mic_ stand.'" 

Barba looks vaguely horrified, but huffs a small laugh all the same. Carisi thinks they both must be delirious. He can understand as much in Barba’s case--the exhilaration of what he’s done is still coming off of him in waves--but for Carisi? 

He can’t stop thinking about that kiss. He knows if he goes on like this for much longer, he’ll convince himself of a million other reasons why it happened, besides that they both wanted it to.

Maybe he wills it into existence, or crowds her too much with his knees, but Carmen slinks out of her chair and excuses herself to take a phone call.

Her phone, Carisi notes, is left on the table atop her plum-colored clutch.

Carisi leans into the vacated space. Barba pretends he doesn’t do much the same.

There’s a moment--another moment of time confined to a prism of doubt--where neither thinks the other will acquiesce. That this could get away from them, now, feels woefully possible. There’s one foot in this bizarre fantasy, where Barba is making the confidence play, and Carisi has words enough to carry him through, and the other coming down hard in favor of hangups, uncertainty, and respectability. 

Ultimately, Carisi can’t deny the lesson for learning it just seconds ago: putting all of yourself up for the taking demands courage as well as recklessness. It can feel daunting; it can _be_ spectacular. 

So he forges ahead. It isn’t pretty.

Carisi asks in a rush of grit and determination that comes through his teeth like grainy silt, “Want to get out of here?”

Barba pulls a face at the wording--it's been a decade since he's been fed that line, and what's more, it should only ever come at the tail end of a tidy succession of Old Fashions. He takes a sip of wine and considers what’s so far proved palatable for him, by circumstance and by choice. 

He drops his voice and warns, “If you’re going to tell me you know a good karaoke place around the corner--”

“I mean, I do, but I was thinking… let’s just go. Wherever you want. You and me.”

Carisi holds strong, holds still, holds his _breath._

He feels a blistering flash of dejavu, harkening back to the morning he spent agonizing over whether he'd passed the bar or not.

The same thought that plagued him then feels like a promise, now: _This could change my whole life._

“I would.” Barba surprises himself, there. “I will.” Surprises himself _again._

A glass of scotch is deposited in front of him by a waiter. Wherever Carmen went, she left with good intentions.

He returns to that ready well, draining half the glass before admitting, “Except, Jack asked that I close the evening.”

Carisi leans back in his seat. He’s considered how a rejection at this point might feel, and ‘delightful’ certainly hadn’t made the list.

“You’re _loving this,_ ” Carisi teases. Barba looks ready to argue-- _the first one was a demand, this is a favor, and the return on a favor for Jack McCoy is not to be missed_ \--but it’s a second look at Carisi that stops him. A soft smile releases the grin from his cheeks, and his blue eyes have a hell of a time finding Barba’s, landing at they do on the stem of every wine glass and the lips of every pristine petal on the squat hydrangea centerpieces, first. 

He’s immeasurably shy for what he’s said, and all the more so for the answer it’s earned him.

“You will, huh?”

“I might,” Barba corrects at once. He’s wary, and it’s not merely a development of the past week, of people seeing him and knowing just that much more past his reputation and say-so. There’s the added strangeness of wanting something and--here, now--inexplicably getting it. 

“People have been smiling at me _en masse._ Could be I’m not thinking clearly.”

Carisi just grins up at the ceiling, and Barba regards him, now infinitely more suspect.

“You smile at me all the time," Barba says, an accusation. 

“How’d you once put it--no offense to my legal acumen, but, I don’t have any?”

“I’ve said that more than once, I can assure you.”

“Maybe that’s your problem. No _emotional_ acumen.” 

Barba tutts in dismay. “Because I won’t walk out of here right now, I’m stunted?”

The suggestion alone is ill-mannered at best.

“No,” Carisi answers simply, still smiling. He has a whole host of words about that--about his actions, Barba’s, the way they interact and respond to one another. Like live wires, the both of them. They snap and shower one another in light, and there’s no harm done to either, but the danger is ready and apparent. 

They’re all things he’d much rather say into the soft hollow of Barba’s throat, or the cool pane of a shoulder blade. 

For thinking he _might_ get that chance, Carisi can’t help but smile.

Barba watches him, maybe understanding, maybe not, but willfully intrigued.

“...Stop that.”

Carisi laughs, a thing so bright and untarnished, Barba doesn’t know what to do for ever having witnessed it. It’s a glossy new car in a shitty neighborhood: you wonder if a stranger has made a wrong turn, or if some local caught the break of a lifetime.

“What are you gonna sing? Don’t you need to, I don’t know, prepare--” Hands waving in front of his own face, Carisi stops himself. “No, nope, nevermind. Of course you planned to blow them all away.” 

“I planned for every conceivable scenario,” Barba allows. “I considered a second song in much the same way as I considered changing my name and profession, ghosting New York entirely and resurfacing three months later in the Midwest.” 

Carisi throws his head back and barks a great, bawdy thing not entirely indicative of a laugh. It's certainly an outburst, and on its own can't be deemed naturally appealing, though he slathers some charm on it and sends it out the door, regardless. He can sooner see Barba injecting a tap number in his routine than he can imagine him ever leaving New York--under cover of shame or otherwise.

“I could meet you after?” It's worded like an offer, but Carisi knows he'll sooner beg than let this go unanswered. "Back here? Or outside? Or… out west?"

There _are_ other people at the table. Barba hasn’t forgotten that.

If he had, Carisi would be wearing that same dumbfounded expression for having been kissed senseless. 

"Stay here," Barba tells him. 

-

McCoy's been drinking, is tipping towards loose, and Barba feels much the same despite leaving behind a nearly-full glass of scotch behind. Good sense, it seems, has long been excused from the situation on both their accounts.

Barba beats around the bush once, twice-- _Thank you for the invitation. I hope I didn’t disappoint. I have to head out._ \--before saying plainly, "I got a better offer."

"Carnegie Hall?" 

There's genuine delight in McCoy's voice, the kind that exists buried in every human heart, only to emerge at the sight of something truly bizarre, truly wonderful, truly wild. And seeing the man who prides himself--perhaps too much--on the excellence and foresight in his work belt out a song with nothing at his back than a taxi driver at a piano certainly qualifies as _wild._

"Leave 'em wanting more?" he jokes, permission and thanks wrapped up in one. 

"Leave them thinking this was a mass hallucination," Barba says, and accepts McCoy’s hand when he offers it. "Have a good night, Jack."

“Have a better one, Rafael.”

The exchange is airtight, though Barba departs from the crowds feeling unbound and exultant. The atmosphere around him, even, turns heady with excitement. He brings this new mood an inch from Carisi’s ear when he leans in and murmurs what reaches Carisi's ears as a hymn: 

"Ready?"

He is rewarded with a delectable shudder. For added effect, Barba reaches well over Carisi’s shoulder to retrieve his glass of scotch, downing it in one. It’s not the most practical choice--at the very least, he feels he’s swallowed a scouring pad--but it’s showy, and he’s on a bit of a roll. 

“You're sure?” Carisi asks, but he’s already moving to stand. He thinks about telling Barba that Carmen swaned back around and collected her things, but decides there’s no way Barba doesn’t already know. 

Barba nods once, prim and concise.

He says, “I'd like to revise my closing statement while it's all fresh.”

Because that much, Barba’s landed on with no further dithering: he is hard work and execution, he is deliberate moves and purposeful ends. Above all, he is as he chooses. 

“Yeah,” Carisi says, his bright response ripping into the silence Barba left for him. It's not the suggestion he's expecting, but for hearing it, Carisi can't imagine anything else. "Yes. I actually have some ideas about that--" 

There, right at the surface, is entrance into a deep well of opportunity and chance. But first, and most agreeably, there is the work.

-

They wait for the elevator. Carisi can see 1 Hogan Place out the window, just south of them. There’s time and space yet for changing minds, backing down, but those notions present themselves as possibilities, not likelihoods.

They exit the building together. The city is cooler for the recent rainfall, and indicative of a chilly autumn to come. The streets are still glossy-wet, but the air is unusually crisp and clean. 

“Did that really do it for you?”

It’s as slick and smooth as anything Barba says in court, and at once Carisi is enticed--he _wants_ to give a good answer, something composed like a body, fit for function. But all the good sense he’s been choking down makes a roaring comeback. He is warned by something deep in his bones, _Watch out for this one._

Carisi opens his mouth and promptly shuts it. He can’t very well lie, and if Barba wasn’t hurting for an audience, chances are he’s not dying for compliments, either.

“Honestly, I was sold on you this afternoon.” Then, with his particular brand of jawing Staten Island sincerity, Carisi corrects: “Well, no, _honestly,_ that ticket got punched… a while ago." He lets _"Long before you were out there singin’ the standards"_ go unsaid. 

Barba beams, smug. He is the picture of satisfaction for getting beyond what he expected, and yet no less than he’d hoped.

“Good answer.” 

His hands slide into his pockets and he shows a little more of his face to the darkened night sky. He is unburdened--at least for now--from the day’s expectations, or perhaps older ones than that. 

“S’nice out,” Carisi says, and when Barba glances his way he finds the man staring at him, a soft smile permanently fixed upon his features. “Mind if we walk to your office?” 

_Oh,_ Barba thinks. _Oh._

Maybe there was a seed of truth to it, but the invitation had been little more than a test--and even then, had Carisi failed, Barba would have retroactively termed it a joke. With no small measure of contrition, Barba knows he’s perhaps lobbed a few too many of both in Carisi’s path. There seems little reason for such an onerous wait when he receives the words with unmatched gratification.

Barba feels fondness creep in, and with it, the impulse to say no less in return, to bestow something of equal value on Carisi. He doesn’t have words--he’s spent them all in an eloquently rendered trap in court, in attempts to name his confounding nerves, in song. Barba thinks, curiously, that he’d like now to be quiet. He’d like to hear someone else’s thoughts. 

That it's been one hell of a night is his only explanation for this terrible oversight.

Life and its ever-tipping odds sort themselves out as he brings a hand to Carisi’s cheek--a gesture he to steady them both--and kisses him again. 

It feels like the least insane thing he’s done all evening, and for a man with absolutely no intention of ever being forced to acknowledge his little performance (this is the favor he’ll demand of McCoy, the only man with power and influence enough to have it--and all associated smirks and grins--wiped from the face of the earth), this bodes well. 

It’s Carisi’s laugh that breaks the kiss--an unimaginably sweet way to subvert something tipping (Barba hopes) towards filth. 

“I’m an idiot,” Carisi says, all brilliant smiles and willful shaking of his head. He gestures with an arm up, vaguely, towards the space they’d just left. At once, he seems wholly confounded by every ludicrous thing that’s happened between the fifteenth floor and the street, and absolutely resolute that Barba is their sole instigator. 

“Somehow I thought that’d be a tough act to follow, even for you.” His smile gets impossibly brighter. “You just don’t let up, huh?” 

Carisi shoves both his hands deep into his pockets. It's a look Barba's seen quite often; he wants to desperately to be close, but overcompensates for thinking he knows better. _You don't know shit,_ Barba thinks, and wants to say so, just to delight in the shock on Carisi's face before he understands--as he will--that they're going to walk through this night and well into another. 

“I certainly don’t intend to,” Barba says, then turns on his heel and starts towards the nearest crosswalk, heading south.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY, that’s quite enough of that. Back to sadness. 
> 
> Thanks for reading my trash :)


End file.
